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San Francisco Adopts Microsoft Cloud

Paul Thurrott | May 18, 2011

The city and county of San Francisco announced today that it will upgrade and consolidate its multiple citywide email systems used by more than 23,000 employees as part of its ongoing efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of its services and reduce IT management costs. Put more simply, SFO is going Microsoft.

“A key part of serving a community as diverse and vibrant as ours starts with making the right investments in information technology,” San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee said. “It is our responsibility to make decisions that are fiscally responsible, forward-looking, and improve the services that city and county employees provide to our constituents.”

Migration to the new cloud email system has already begun and will continue over the next 12 months. Employees across 60 departments and agencies are scheduled to move to Microsoft Exchange Online, a cloud-based enterprise messaging solution that offers improved communications and collaboration tools, including email, calendar coordination, and hosted archiving.

“The City and County of San Francisco has always been forward-thinking in leveraging technology to improve the services it provides,” said Gail Thomas Flynn, vice president of U.S. State and Local Government at Microsoft Corp. “We are excited at the opportunity to equip and support the employees of San Francisco with the tools they need to better serve the people of San Francisco.”

Several competing solutions were examined based on criteria that included price, security, functionality, flexibility, SLA-backed service, proven record for support, and integration with existing infrastructure and tools.

“By moving to the Microsoft platform, we not only get immediate improvements to our system, but we gain a disaster-resilient system that provides the most modern information tools, with solid support provisions that can scale with the needs of our constituents,” San Francisco Chief Information Officer Jon Walton said.

“Combined with other IT consolidation efforts, converting seven different email systems into one platform will move us closer to our vision of a truly 21st century city government,” said David Chiu, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.